Phil Blood Appointed Sr. Director of PSC’s Computational Biology Group

Phil Blood, widely recognized for his contributions to national genomics and molecular dynamics communities, has been appointed senior director of PSC’s Computational Biology Group. In his new position, Blood is responsible for PSC’s strategy across the life sciences, overseeing the Biomedical Applications and Public Health Applications Groups and also working more broadly to expand PSC’s contributions to this vital research segment.

Blood is principal investigator for the Anton 2 project, which provides access to a special-purpose supercomputer for biomolecular simulation designed and made available without cost by D.E. Shaw Research to the national research community. Blood also serves as co-PI for the National Center for Genome Analysis Support (NCGAS), whose mission is to enable the biological research community to analyze, understand, and make use of large-scale genomic data. He made key contributions to the creation of the Pittsburgh Genome Resource Repository (PGRR), which provides data management and computing infrastructure to support biomedical investigation using Big Data. He also manages the NSF XSEDE Novel and Innovative Projects program, which accelerates research, scholarship, and education by new communities.

“High-throughput sequencing and advanced imaging are moving computational biology very fast,” observed Nick Nystrom, interim director of PSC. “Phil’s broad understanding and strong connections across the community will help PSC to lead and enable high-impact research, both nationally and locally.”

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Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

PSC is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Established in 1986, PSC is supported by several federal agencies, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and private industry and is a leading partner in XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), the National Science Foundation cyber-infrastructure program.